


Broken Hearts Tessellate Tonight

by matchsticks_p (matchsticks)



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Cannot emphasize enough how much this focuses on friendship, Friendship, Gen, Possibly Pre-Slash, Strong Friendship - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:54:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchsticks/pseuds/matchsticks_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian invents excuses to visit Rudy.</p><p>After Rudy gets shot, he makes John do it too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Hearts Tessellate Tonight

Dorian invents ailments more often than he should, as excuses to visit Rudy. He'll tell Maldonado something like, "A capacitor's blown in my main circuit board," and nobody will even bat an eye when he subsequently disappears into Rudy's lab for hours.

Personally, Rudy thinks it's transparent as hell, from every angle. Dorian is a top of the line police model, not an antique—he doesn't _have_ circuit boards. And it's plain to Rudy that Dorian keeps coming to see him because he worries about him, always working alone in a windowless room. He makes no attempts to hide it. Rudy doesn't completely mind, although he supposes he should feel more wounded pride. But it's nice to know someone cares. He cares about Dorian too, enough to be able to deduce that he likes coming down here for other, personal reasons as well. 

When he isn't trying to engage Rudy in conversation, Dorian wanders around the lab, inspecting every last inch of it. He's almost as meticulous as Rudy about not messing anything up, so Rudy swallows down the urge to follow him around and make sure everything is put back in its place.

"I was born here," Dorian says, indicating the table where Rudy examines every synthetic that comes to him, examines them with far too much tenderness to make his co-workers comfortable with inviting him out to drinks after a long day. 

"Both times," Dorian continues.

"Yes," Rudy says, because it's true.

"You made me."

"A succession of skilled labourers made you, from the fibres of your skeleton to the lenses in your eyes. I was merely the last in line to contribute."

Dorian waves off the fact. "You made the most important parts. The ones that make me _me_."

"I developed the empathy programs you run," Rudy concedes. Therefore it's possibly his fault that all the DRNs were taken off the market and considered unstable. Blame whoever thought it would be a good idea to ask the office weirdo to approximate a normal.

"And the logic programs, and half of my brain itself," Dorian says. "You know how I think."

"The beauty of your brain," Rudy says, and he knows he's probably being creepy again, "is that it's made to work like a human's. You learn, you adapt, you grow, and you're no longer who you were when you were born. I have no idea how you think." He has no real idea how anyone thinks. 

"You do," Dorian insists. He does this shtick sometimes, where he'll pretend not to understand humans, plays up his robot self because it lets him steamroll over people. "You know me even better than I know myself. If a single wire was out of place, you could take one look at me and you'd know."

Rudy has no idea where this is going.

"Do you like that? Sometimes I do it to Detective Kennex—I run a diagnostic on him and I can tell him his exact heart rate and blood pressure. It's funny to see him complain about it. But it's also a nice sense of...security, I guess. If anything's wrong with him, I'd know, and he knows I'd know. Do you feel like that with me?"

Rudy has no idea where this is going.

* * *

"I have no sexual libido," Dorian informs him one night, in a tone even more gentle than his usual voice.

"I know."

"I'm not programmed to experience it."

Rudy knows. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I often make fun of John for his attraction to various females of his species but what if I'm just jealous? Of his ability to feel it, I mean."

"Are you here for advice on how to deal with your mates being more romantically successful than you? Because I've had a lot of experience, but very few triumphs."

Dorian quirks his lips at him. "How do you deal, then?"

"I used to throw myself into my work until I forgot about it. Now I've gotten rid of the problem entirely by not having any mates at all." He says it without too much embarrassment. It's nothing Dorian doesn't already know. His sympathy responses are programmed to be keen but Rudy doesn't mind a bit of pity now and then, as long as it's from someone who knows that for all his other failures he takes pride in being very, very good at his job.

Dorian doesn't respond as expected. Instead, he says, "If I could have sexual feelings, I might ask you out to dinner sometime. And if I could eat, I guess."

Rudy takes a long time to mull over what just happened. They sit in silence but it isn't uncomfortable. He rarely finds silences with synthetics uncomfortable. Finally, he says, "This is the most elaborately thought-out version of the 'it's not you, it's me,' speech I've ever gotten."

The blue lights under the skin of Dorian's face twinkle briefly like an ephemeral constellation, and Rudy assumes he's doing a quick google search on all the intricacies of how humans let someone down gently. 

"I'm afraid I don't fully understand," Dorian says, and it's not the confused robot act this time, it's genuine incomprehension. "Your use of that colloquialism implies that you think I'm withholding the truth to spare your feelings, but I'm not. The problem _isn't_ you. It's neither of us. I just don't have the requisite components. It's a fact."

"I know, I was just..." Rudy eyes the half-dissected microchip he has under his magnifying glass and wonders if Dorian will let him drop the conversation and go back to figuring out why it spontaneously combusted.

Dorian apparently will not. He moves until he's positioned between Rudy and his desk, blocking his view of the magnifying glass with his shoulder to ensure he has Rudy's full attention. "You are deeply committed to doing things perfectly," Dorian says. It's not so much a compliment as a fact. "Therefore, it should bother you that you got a detail wrong earlier."

"What are you talking about?"

Dorian opens his mouth but Rudy's voice comes out, either a perfect imitation or a replayed recording of what he said earlier: " Now I've gotten rid of the problem entirely by not having any mates at all." It's very disconcerting.

"Your claim was incorrect," Dorian says in his own voice. "I am your friend."

* * *

Dorian sends John down to chat with him more and more often, after Rudy comes back from taking a few days off to recover from the gunshot wound. John only does it because Dorian makes him. Rudy regrets ever letting Dorian get it into his head that he needs to prove Rudy has friends, because John has approximately zero percent of Dorian's interest in keeping Rudy's lab neat.

"Hey, is this the new prototype for our—" John reaches to take something off a shelf and in the process manages to knock three other things to the ground. Rudy winces, rushes over to take stock of the damage. 

"Look, John, I realize it's very boring for you here and you feel the need to compensate by turning my laboratory into a playground for your own entertainment, but if you're going to break incredibly delicate equipment that the department has invested unspeakable funds into developing, then maybe it would be better if you didn't come at all. I'll tell Dorian that you continue to visit, if you don't want him to nag you."

John gets to his knees and helps him pick up some of the broken glass. "Hey," he says, voice very gruff, touching Rudy's arm briefly to get him to look up. "You're a nice guy and yes, C3PO nags me a lot, but I'd want to check up on you even if he didn't. I'm sorry if you haven't been getting that vibe from me."

"It's not you, it's me," Rudy says, smiling slightly at this inside joke with himself. "I just get along better with synthetics."

"Well, I'm like one-tenth synthetic," John says with an ease that surprises Rudy. He had been actively rejecting that leg for a very long time.

"Shall I converse with just your leg, then?"

John laughs, not deeply but a startled chuckle, like he never thought Rudy could be funny. "Come on," he says, clapping an intimidatingly strong hand on Rudy's shoulder. "You've done enough work for today. There's this great noodle bar that'll make you a drink bigger than your head if you ask nicely. On a Friday night like this it'll be full of pretty girls—or boys, whatever," John catches himself. Rudy wonders what Dorian's told him. "—Doesn't matter. Either way. There'll be pretty people and don't ever tell him I said this, but Dorian makes a decent wing man when he isn't trying to totally humiliate you for shits and giggles."

"He never tries to humiliate me."

"You do a good enough job of that yourself, buddy. Wait, shit, I didn't mean—"

"It's okay," Rudy says as he grabs his coat. "Just some teasing between friends, right?" He offers John a smile.

"Exactly," John says, roughly punching his uninjured arm in some sort of masculine display of camaraderie that Rudy has never partaken in. 

It's all very perplexing, but Dorian's waiting in the car and Rudy figures he'll have plenty of future opportunities to figure it out.

**Author's Note:**

> *title stolen from a Tokyo Police Club lyric, sorry.   
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
